Lightning

Cloud, by New Zealand-based designer Richard Clarkson, is an interactive lamp designed to mimic a thundercloud. It brings the outside inside, providing an audiovisual show that looks and sounds like thunder and lightning ... but thankfully rain isn't included in the package.

Although the iPhone may indeed pack a whole plethora of features, it still lacks a USB port. This means that it can't share files with a Mac or PC via a regular flash drive. The iStick, however, isn't regular. According to its creators, it's the world's first Lightning-to-USB flash drive.

A scientific team in China fortuitously recorded the first optical spectrum of an example of ball lightning. The ball lightning, which was accompanied by a cloud to ground lightning strike, appears to have consisted at least partially of vaporized soil from the location of the strike.

Taiwanese design company KB is set to release its Brick Lightning Cap which will connect Lightning iPhones and iPads to standard Lego bricks.

A new technology can recycle concrete with greater efficiency by zapping it with lightning.

A device being developed at the Picatinny Arsenal military research facility in New Jersey directs lightning bolts down plasma channels created by high intensity laser beams.

Rob Flickenger has created a fully functional, battery-operated Tesla Gun of the kind used by Nikola Tesla himself in a graphic novel about the pioneers of power.

A California team is building the world's largest Tesla coils to help with lightning research.

Protecting aircraft from lightning strikes probably isn't the first use of nanotechnology that springs to mind.

A recent study indicates that the number of people paying to see tornadoes up close and personal is on the rise.

New research indicates that it may be possible to harness electricity from the air.

A team from Duke University team captured a one-second view and magnetic field measurements of a 'gigantic jet' that scientists hope will give them a much clearer understanding about these rare occurrences of lightning.